{"id":281,"date":"2008-04-08T19:11:58","date_gmt":"2008-04-08T23:11:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2008\/04\/08\/stephen-dunn-madrugada\/"},"modified":"2008-04-08T19:11:58","modified_gmt":"2008-04-08T23:11:58","slug":"stephen-dunn-madrugada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2008\/04\/08\/stephen-dunn-madrugada\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Dunn, “Madrugada”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"stephen-dunn-headshot.jpg\"<\/p>\n

No word for it in English, that time
\nbetween midnight and dawn. Most of us
\nare asleep by then, outrunning leopards
\non blue lawns, or avenging our daily lives.
\nBut in South America many are awake.
\nI see them dancing in the madrugada<\/i>
\nall madrugada<\/i> long. Even those working<\/p>\n

quietly in their rooms at 3 A.M.—
\nit pleases me to think—are doing so
\nin the madrugada<\/i>. I love how life nags
\nand language responds.
\nBut if I were to fly to Caracas or Lima
\nto live the word and to say it out loud,
\nno doubt it would start to rhyme<\/p>\n

with grunts from bar fights
\nand the muffled cries of women
\nforced into cars, and in dim-lit rooms
\nthe silence of money sliding
\ninto someone’s hand. Madrugada<\/i>,
\nI might say then, without pleasure,
\nits meaning so consonant with the world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Everything Else in the World<\/i><\/a>. Other poems from this collection include “The Kiss<\/a>.” Last month, The New Yorker<\/i> ran a new Dunn poem, “History<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

In an interview with The Cortland Review<\/i><\/a>, Dunn speaks to the importance of creative tenacity: “Poetry doesn’t reveal its secrets to the occasional poet. Be as committed as, say, a violinist or a ballerina would be. No shortcuts. Young poets may be the only would-be artists I know who actually believe they might be able to pull something off because they have strong feelings about it and who are not embarrassed when they hit false notes. Finally, you must be a little driven, and what you’re doing must be crucial to you in order not to be defeated by the likely neglect that awaits you, the lack of rewards, and the fact that, by and large, your culture doesn’t take you seriously.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No word for it in English, that time between midnight and dawn. Most of us are asleep by then, outrunning leopards on blue lawns, or avenging our daily lives. But in South America many are awake. I see them dancing in the madrugada all madrugada long. Even those working quietly in their rooms at 3 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}